This edition of Jones''s classic 1987 novel features an Introduction by another masterful, award-winning writer: Ursula K. Le Guin. A powerfully moving story about children who are, quite literally, racing through time to save their world.--"Publishers Weekly," starred review.

From the Publisher:

London, 1939. Vivian Smith thinks she is being evacuated to the countryside, because of the war. But she is being kidnapped - out of her own time. Her kidnappers are Jonathan and Sam, two boys her own age, from a place called Time City, designed especially to oversee history. But now history is going critical, and Jonathan and Sam are convinced that Time City's impending doom can only be averted by a twentieth-century girl named Vivian Smith. Too bad they have the wrong girl. . . .

Annotation:Eleven-year-old Vivian Smith is plucked from a train at the start of World War II by two boys from Time City, a land that exists in time but outside of history. Initially mistaken for the one person who can prevent this faraway place from imminent collapse, Vivian must join the boys in their effort to save their homeland--if only because the fate of the universe is at stake.

Author Bio

Ursula K. Le Guin

Born in Berkeley, California to an anthropologist father and a writer mother, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote her first story at the age of 9. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 and received an M.A. from Columbia in 1952. The next year, she met her future husband, Charles A. Le Guin, while on the Queen Mary passenger liner en route to Paris on a Fulbright scholarship--they married in December of 1953. While she is known as an author of science fiction, fantasy, and children's books, Le Guin's stories and novels supersede the genres; she uses science fiction conventions to explore vast human issues such as sexuality, human relations, gender politics, and war. Her writing has been widely embraced by readers and critics, winning a number of awards including both the Hugo and Nebula awards for two of her books, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS (1969) and THE DISPOSSESSED (1974). Le Guin has been greatly influenced by Taoist philosophy, and her vast body of nonfiction has included a retelling of the Lao Tzu's TAO TE CHIONG. In 1998, the Colorado School of Mines' Mobile Robots Project named one of its newly designed robots after her, along with ones named after fellow authors Lois McMaster Bujold and Connie Willis. In 2000, she was the recipient of The Los Angles Times' Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Dianna Wynne Jones is known for her intelligent, humorous, and decidedly oddball children's and young-adult fantasy and science-fiction books. Jones was inspired to start writing because of her own dismay at the children's fiction available for her sons. Her best-loved books are the Chrestomanci series, which includes CHARMED LIFE, THE LIVES OF CHRISTOPHER CHANT, THE MAGICIANS OF CAPRONA, WITCH WEEK, CONRAD'S FATE, and THE PINHOE EGG.